Lay the Mountains Low (89 page)

His was the only horse that had reached the siege area alive. Colonel John Gibbon had abandoned his big gray down in the village with its broken leg, and by the time the retreat began none of the other handful of mounts a few of the civilians rode down from the wagon train ever managed to get out of the village alive.

Just as soon as they were completely surrounded, the Nez Perce began sighting in on Woodruff's animal—certainly the biggest target, easiest, too, since the men were religiously hugging the ground and digging in.

At first Woodruff had resisted the notion of killing the animal himself. If the Indians ended up doing it, he could accept that. But to kill such a magnificent horse himself?

For a long time as he brooded on it the lieutenant kept waiting to hear a third shot from that howitzer, knowing that the arrival of the fieldpiece was sure to drive off the warriors who had them surrounded, forcing them to flee on out of the village, raising their seige before his horse was wounded beyond any hope of recovery. But they heard no more than those two cannonshots—his hopes fading as quickly as had the hissing boom of that second, and final, blast from the mountain howitzer.

“Just shoot your horse and be done with it, Mr. Woodruff!” Gibbon finally growled himself, grown exasperated as the lieutenant's mount kicked and thrashed against the hold the lieutenant had on it, its wild gyrations endangering any of the men entrenching nearby as it danced this way and that.

“Yes, sir.”

One of the civilians shouted, “We're gonna need them horse steaks for lunch, Lieutenant!”

Without paying the brittle laughter any heed, Woodruff grabbed hold of the stirrup, quickly dragged himself to his feet, then lunged alongside the nervous animal to its head. Before he had time to reconsider what he was doing he fired a pistol bullet into the horse's brain.

It dropped like a sack of buckshot, kicked a few times, then lay still with a final shudder as a bullet scuffed into the dirt beside his left foot. For an instant, that foot went numb; then his heel began to burn. Sinking to his knee as bullets whined through the trees, he twisted around to inspect his boot. A bullet had sliced through the back of the leather, making for an oozy flesh wound.

“Very good, Mr. Woodruff,” Gibbon said. “Come with me and the others.”

Woodruff rose to a crouch, slowly putting pressure on the wounded heel, finding that it didn't hurt nearly as bad as it looked. He stretched out on his belly, following the colonel and a handful of officers as they crawled to the end of their crude one-acre fortress, right to the very last of the skinny lodgepole pines, where they found themselves at the edge of a sharp embankment that fell away some twenty feet to the creek and willows below.

“Look there, General,” Woodruff announced. “Warriors working their way at us.”

“Should we fire at them?” Captain Rawn asked.

Gibbon wagged his head. “No. I came here only to have us a look at the village, reconnoiter the enemy's retaking of their camp.”

Those warriors and the Nez Perce who had already closed in around them on the hillside, had Gibbon's command surrounded. It was clear from the discussion the officers held there at the edge of the embankment that there was no way to break out of the lines and rush the encampment in some desperate bid to locate more ammunition among the lodges. That became the overriding concern
there and then: the fact that they were separated from their wagon train carrying a reserve of ammunition.

“But what if the Nez Perce ride back on our trail and find our wagon corral?” asked Captain Richard Comba.

Gibbon's face turned a solemn gray. “The train guard isn't big enough to hold off a stiff attack.”

“I respectfully submit we've got to have our company commanders stop their men from throwing away their ammunition,” Woodruff suggested.

Gibbon agreed as they heard an unearthly scream from one of the wounded men left in the creek bottom—those agonized cries from below filling the quiet pauses between gunshots on this hillside. “All of you, we must conserve our cartridges. Put a stop to rapid firing at the enemy. Shoot only when you are assured of a target.”

As Woodruff was just starting to rock onto a knee to follow the others crabbing back to rejoin the men in that corral of rifle pits, a volley of shots persuaded the lieutenant to pitch himself onto the ground with the rest. He lay there a few moments, catching his breath, then realized his legs hurt like hell—probably from that excruciating climb up the slope.

But when he attempted to drag the legs under him preparing to get back onto his feet, Woodruff realized it was more than mere muscle fatigue. The pale sky blue of his wool britches was spotted with glistening blood. Both legs. Just above the knees.

Mortally scared, he immediately grabbed both burning wounds and squeezed, hopeful it would relieve the rising pain, then quickly felt along the big bones for any fractures.

“Thank you, God,” he whispered.

Woodruff's head sagged back in his shoulders as he closed his eyes, grateful the bullet that had sliced through both legs had missed the bones. Otherwise, he would have lost both legs.

Oh, Louie,
he thought of his wife as he opened his stinging eyes, smearing a tear across a powder-grimed cheek with the back of his bloody hand.

At least I can still dance with you on our next anniversary!

WHILE
most of the warriors who had taken part in the capture of the big wagon gun now went back to fight the soldiers who were hiding down in their hollows, Yellow Wolf and his mother's brother, Light in the Mountain, rode off up the slope, leading a small scouting party to search for more soldiers who must surely be coming their way.

Not far up the trail, the scouts divided, most continuing right on up the mountainside to put themselves above the soldiers who had escaped the village and taken refuge in the trees, while Yellow Wolf and Light in the Mountain stayed with the route the wagon gun soldiers had taken when they turned around and fled during the capture of their weapon. Farther and farther the two rode, without seeing any sign of the white men.

“These soldiers have run very fast,” sighed Light in the Mountain as they finally brought their ponies to a halt.

“Do you think they have run all the way back to the settlers' valley?”
*
Yellow Wolf wondered.

“I hoped we could see Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers coming over the mountains,” said his uncle. “At least to run across some of their big wagons filled with supplies and more ammunition.”

“Listen, you can even hear the guns of
Ollokot
's warriors firing from so far away,” he told his uncle. “Since we did not find the soldiers, or their wagons, let's go back and see if we can help the families.”

“Maybe there is something for us to do in the village, to help the wounded,” Light in the Mountain suggested.

As they backtracked down that trail both the village and the soldiers had used to reach the Place of the Ground Squirrels, Yellow Wolf began to hear the first faint wails of grief rising from those in the encampment. As the pair reached the bottom and were beginning to angle left to see
how the fight was going at the siege area, both riders heard a loud scream—one clearly made by a man.

Thinking one of their own might be in danger, they immediately kicked their ponies into a lope for the tall willows in the boggy bottom. It was there they came upon a scene of three older women hunched over a figure wearing the muddy pale blue britches of a soldier.
*
His legs kicked and flailed as two of the old women pinned him down and a third squatted over him, straddling her victim. She had a bloodied knife clutched in both of her hands, poised with it over her head, preparing to plunge it into the soldier a second time.

The wounded man screamed even louder this time, kicking with his legs as the two warriors came upon the brutal scene.

Down slashed the knife as the soldier attempted to twist out of the way. Just when he turned his head to the side, the woman jammed the big blade into the side of his neck, blood squirting from a ruptured vessel, spraying her in the face and across her breasts.

His back arched in agony, his legs thrashing. On and on the white man begged and pleaded, fighting from side to side as his clothing and the ground beneath him grew soggy with blood. For a brief instant his eyes caught and held on Yellow Wolf's, then rolled back in his head a little as the old woman plunged her knife into his neck a third time. The soldier went limp and stopped fighting.

The other two women slowly dragged themselves to their feet, wiping their blood-splattered hands and arms on the white man's britches. That's when the three noticed the two warriors.

“He was already wounded,” the knife holder explained as she wiped off the man's blood on her torn and soot-smudged dress. “I wanted to help him die faster. Even
though my son did not die fast this morning when one of these soldiers shot him. So I think this
suapie
got better than he deserved.”

“Does he have any bullets on him?” Light in the Mountain asked.

The woman shook her head. “There was no gun or bullets near him. He must have lost them running from the village.”

“Or,” Yellow Wolf commented as he looked up the hillside to where the gunfire was sporadic, “the other soldiers took his gun and bullets for themselves when they left him behind to die a hard way.”

“Let's go see these soldiers who would leave one of their own behind in battle,” his uncle suggested.

“Yes—I want to see what sort of creature would leave his friends behind to die at the hands of women.”
*

Now that he and the other men had rallied and taken back their camp here in the river bottom, Lean Elk's curiosity was drawn by that loud roar of a wagon gun. He knew a little something about such weapons. The half-breed Frenchman galloped uphill to lead in the dismantling of the soldier cannon.

Showing the others how to use the white man's tools found in the wagon boxes, Poker Joe directed the loosening of each hub and the removal of the wheels. The warriors had great fun starting these heavy wheels spinning and
bounding down the hillside toward the creek bottom. With the gun eventually removed from its wagon, several of the stronger men worked hard to pitch the shiny brass barrel down the slope, watching it tumble and bound through the saplings trees and over the soft ground until it came to a stop just two short arrow flights below them.

That's when Bird Alighting took over the destruction, pulling his skinning knife from his belt and showing the others how they were going to dig a hole in which to bury the cannon.

“It's a great pity you destroyed this gun.”

Turning at the words, Bird Alighting, Poker Joe, and the others looked up at the older horseman who had stopped above them. Of this warrior Joe did not know, he asked, “Why such a pity?”

“I know how to use this kind of gun.”

Very dubious of such a claim, Poker Joe got to his feet and walked over to the horseman. He asked, “How would you know such a thing?”

“I learned when I was with the soldier chief named Wright.”

That almost sounded convincing to Joe. “You fought alongside the soldiers in that war with Wright?”

“Yes,” the horseman answered. “Against the Cayuse and Yakima. That's where I learned.”

“Did you ever fire the gun yourself?” Bird Alighting challenged.

“No, but I watched them load and fire it over and over again, so I know how the white men do it.”

Poker Joe looked down at the half-buried fieldpiece and shrugged. “Too late.”

“Yes,” the horseman said as he eased away. “And too bad. We could have used it to dislodge those soldiers from their rabbit hollows over in the trees.”

 

*
The Bitterroot valley.

*
Historical testimony reveals that this soldier was in all likelihood Private Michael Gallagher, musician, attached to D Company of the Seventh U. S. Infantry.

*
Big Hole battle historians have documented that as many as eight of Gibbon's soldiers and Catlin's volunteers were indeed left behind in the retreat, eight white men still alive to one degree or another at that point when the rest made their mad dash to the hillside point of timber. These men were discovered by the women, old men, and boys who eagerly scoured through the brush to find any such white enemies still breathing. After
Ollokot
's warriors had pulled back the following day and Howard's men had reached the scene a day after that, upon a search of the creek-bottom battlefield these eight bodies were discovered—not one of those wounded still alive after the Nez Perce had finished them off in a most horrific manner.

A
UGUST
9, 1877

L
IEUTENANT CHARLES WOODRUFF FLINCHED AT THAT
next dull thud—more lead slamming into human flesh.